


Time I Had Some Time Alone

by bumblefuck



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-07-20
Updated: 2011-07-20
Packaged: 2017-10-21 14:17:13
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/226123
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bumblefuck/pseuds/bumblefuck
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Nick wakes up with a body that feels like a stranger's, scars on his face, and guilt he can't escape.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Time I Had Some Time Alone

**Author's Note:**

> So this is something I wrote I think last year but didn't get around to posting until now. It starts right after 5.22 'Swan Song'. It has been beta'd (thanks, you know who you are ♥) but if you catch any mistakes feel free to point them out. Constructive criticism is always welcome.

Nick wakes, cold and sore and alone on a wooden floor. He flops out a hand, fingers encountering nothing but more floorboards and dust.

His face _hurts._

He pulls his hand in to touch his cheek; he has to jerk it away again almost immediately, hissing as pain flares. Blisters, he thinks, like he got burned.

His mouth tastes like ashes, which he feels is appropriate.

Standing takes more effort than he thinks it should, his knees protesting and hands aching. When he’s finally upright he has to pause for breath, and to make sure he isn’t going to fall, bent over with his hands on his knees while his head spins. He feels vaguely bemused to notice he’s wearing the same clothes he had been when he was still himself. He feels more horrified, though, when he notices there’s blood on them.

His memory’s hazy, but he’s pretty sure he used to be in better shape than this.

He’s also sure he did some very, very bad things in the past couple of months; he remembers blood and screams and dying and burning.

So much burning.

He straightens, finding himself lost. The empty room gives him no indication of where he is, what city or state he’s appeared in, or even if he’s still in America. The bare walls tell him nothing. Dust seems to have settled over everything.

He wonders if the people who lived here are dead. If there were ever people living here at all.

The thought of what else could have used this room makes him shudder. Makes his breath catch in his chest.

He doesn’t let himself think the name _Lucifer._

The distant noise of traffic draws him to the window. It’s frosted over in a circle; he remembers blowing on it, his lips making an ‘o’, ice covering wherever his breath touched.

Drawn in the frost is a pitchfork, three pronged and pointed; it reminds him of _psi,_ the symbol for the wave function, something he remembers from his high school science classes. He thinks it must mean something, that it’s there, something about atoms and states and probabilities and change.

He swipes at the drawing with a sleeve-covered hand. The cold bites at him through the thin material; he blows on his hand to warm it and is relieved when his breath doesn’t come out icy.

 _It’s warm,_ he thinks, blinking at his fingers, before he’s laughing helplessly, and then crying as well, tears stinging in the wounds on his face as he shakes and laughs and sobs because he’s finally, _finally_ free.

Through the patch of glass he cleared with his sleeve the city outside is dark but for the distant red of taillights on the road.

He sinks down against the wall underneath the window, only to leap up again when he sees the two bodies, sprawled just near where he had been lying.

“Oh, God,” he says, clapping a hand over his mouth as bile rises in his throat.

Staggering on exhausted legs, he flees from the building and into the night.

***

The clerk at the car rental place stares at him when he slides his credit card across the desk. Nick tries to ignore it and hopes desperately that his cards still work. That he hasn’t been declared dead overnight. That his accounts aren’t frozen.

When the guy hands him back his card along with a set of keys, Nick’s knees go weak with relief. He was still surprised he had his wallet at all, but it had been in his back pocket when he woke that first morning.

The next, stiff and sore and still cold, curled up on a hard motel bed with pale light streaming through the windows, he had been glad not to have to see the circle and the pitchfork again. He didn’t want more reminders of what had happened than were already etched into his skin.

“Thankyou,” he says, softly, his voice sounding strange and rough to his own ears. The clerk just nods, eyes still fixated rudely, bluntly, on the sores on Nick’s cheeks. Nick escapes as quickly as he can, car keys clenched so hard in his hand that their teeth cut into his skin.

The car he gets is a Honda Civic from the early 2000s. It rumbles to life on the first turn of the key, and Nick just sits there for a moment, adjusting to the feel of it. He still feels like a stranger in his own skin, like he’s trespassing on someone else’s property; angrily he shakes the thought off and pulls out of the lot.

The roads feel alien to him now, the bustle of cars and people closing in on him. Their nearness makes him shiver with newly discovered claustrophobia. He looks at the faces of the drivers around him, of the people on the streets. He wonders if they know, if they can feel it somehow, that their world is ending. If they know that he – if they know what part he played in it.

He’s barely out of the city when he has to pull the car over and throw up.

Chest heaving, he wipes his mouth with a shaking hand. He wishes he’d picked up some water with the new clothes he bought from a discount store – he had gone to the hospital, made it up the steps and almost to the door before the thought of explaining exactly what had happened to him became too much and he had to run, had to get away and out of Detroit.

He had tossed his bloody garments in the trash at the store, donning the new ones as soon as he purchased them. They weren’t perfect – an old t-shirt, some new jeans and a jacket, all a little too large – but they felt wonderful. They felt clean.

And now here he is, running.

Drawing a deep breath, he climbs back behind the wheel and starts the car again. He wishes he could turn on the radio, so he wouldn’t be so alone with his thoughts, but the idea of listening to the news and finding out what he started makes him feel sick again.

In that moment he misses Sarah more than ever before.

He pulls off the shoulder and back onto the road and leaves Detroit behind him.

***

Pike Creek doesn’t notice when he arrives. He slinks through the streets in his rental car, shoulders hunched and head bowed, a little, as if there’s a chance someone would recognise him and somehow _know_.

His house looks the same as ever when he pulls up; empty and dead and abandoned. The grass has grown long in his front yard and the wind pushes through it and makes it ripple and shake. His legs feel leaden as he pushes through the iron gate and makes his way up the path.

He stands on his front step for a long time before he can open the door.

He’s not sure what he’s expecting when he finally goes inside. Blood, maybe, or something equally horrible. Some sign of what had happened there, some sign that in his bedroom upstairs, Nick had said yes.

Instead it’s exactly as he left it. Even the dishes he hadn’t bothered to wash from his last meal are still in the sink. The sauce from his dinner has hardened to his plate, brown-red and crusty. He’ll probably throw it away instead of bothering to wash it. It’s not like he’s short on dishes, anyway, now that there’s only him living there.

Looking at the plates, he realises he can’t remember the last time he ate.

He briefly considers turning the television on to find out what’s happening, but decides he doesn’t want to – if the world really is ending, he doesn’t want to know about it. He’s had his fill of violence, of death.

When he eventually forces himself to go upstairs, he moves first to the bathroom. He stares at himself for a long, long time, fingers coming up to trace the edge of the burn on his left cheek. They go down to his chest, the sores, and when he moves his head to the side the one on his neck stings.

Apart from the burns, he looks the same; his hair is the same length, and he doesn’t need a shave any more than he did when he left.

His eyes, though, look haunted. Devastated. Empty.

“Snap out of it, Nick,” he tells himself, before pulling a tube of ointment from the medicine cabinet and rubbing it over his face. He sighs as the sting eases. He’s still so tired.

He spends the rest of the day avoiding going into his bedroom. He tries to find things to do so he doesn’t have to think, but there’s not a lot to be done – a trip to the store to replace the food that’s gone bad in his absence, returning the rental car to the local branch, even mowing the lawn. He checks the messages on his answering machine, but after the first one makes him start to cry he deletes the rest.

He makes dinner but doesn’t eat most of it, ends up scraping about two thirds into the garbage. As night falls he sits on the couch until his eyelids get heavy and he falls into an exhausted sleep.

He dreams of fire and ice and death, and wakes in the dark, sweating and shuddering.

He doesn’t move to his bedroom, but instead curls up on the couch, head pillowed on his arms, and tries not to think, lest it bring on the dreams again.

This time when he drifts off, he dreams of Sarah and their child, and how much blood there had been.

***

The next day Nick wakes up early. He gasps and shakes himself awake, ripped from his nightmare almost violently, before realising he’s in his own house, alone in his body. It’s still dark outside; a glance at the VCR tells him it’s not even four. There’s an ache in his back from sleeping on the couch.

Action seems preferable to sleep, now, despite the early hour, and so he forces himself to his feet.

He makes an attempt shaving, but quickly gives up because of the sores. He spends almost an hour searching for something to do before he steels himself and finally goes to his bedroom.

It too looks the same as when he left. The sheets are still rumpled from where he slept on them, blankets folded back on one side.

He thinks back to the bare room where the devil left him. _Psi_ on the window. So much seems different, and yet so much seems to have stayed the same. Maybe it’s just him.

He wonders if, when he dies, the devil will greet him like an old friend.

Walking to the closet, he pulls out a suitcase and begins to pack. He moves quickly, almost running in his haste to get away from the memories that rise up to choke him when he’s inside the house.

The case _thunks_ into the trunk of his car when he gets outside, landing heavily next to the large bag of salt he had bought at the store along with his groceries. Nick looks at the bag, then to his suitcase and back again, then nods firmly and shuts the trunk.

The roads are quiet as he leaves; he’s not sure he’ll ever come back.

This time he pushes a CD into the player to drown out his thoughts. Bowie can’t fully drown out the litany of _it’s your fault look what you did you’re a monster_ that’s been running through his head ever since Detroit – maybe before – but it helps.

Just not enough.

***

A week later Nick finds himself in California, much to his own astonishment; he’s never been to the east coast before, didn’t set out with a destination in mind. He supposes it’s appropriate – the other side of the country, as far from anything he knows as he can possibly be without getting on a plane.

He’s been driving hard these past few days, often going ten or more hours behind the wheel and never stopping in one place for more than a night, waking each morning surprised the world hasn’t ended yet. When he couldn’t find a motel he slept in his car, the backseat uncomfortable but a small inconvenience compared to his need to just move, to be anywhere else besides somewhere he knows.

Los Angeles is sunny and bright when he gets there, bustling with enough people that he feels safe losing himself in a crowd, diverse enough that the now scabbed-over sores on his face won’t draw that many stares, and different enough from Pike Creek that he can’t associate anything with his former life.

That’s how he’s begun to see it – there was before, and there is after.

Before his wife and child were killed, and after.

Before he gave himself up, and after.

Sometimes it’s hard to remember ‘before’.

The city washes over him, soothes him and grants him anonymity, and so he decides to stay.

On the first night, after finding a room, Nick goes and buys three things: another bag of rock salt, a silver knife, and a lot of alcohol.

He then proceeds to get very drunk, and ends up sitting on the floor inside a ring of salt while he stares at the knife and wonders if killing himself is worth the effort.

The next day, when he comes to, still alive, he pours the rest of the whiskey down the sink and vows never to drink again.

He leaves the ring of salt where it is, surrounding the bed and a lot of the floor. The only change he makes is to scoop some up and put it in an envelope, which he keeps in his pocket, just in case.

He gets a job in a coffee shop, and the menial tasks settle him; he can focus on just taking the orders as they come, instead of the incessant repetition of _they know what you did, they know what you did, you can never escape it_ in his mind. He works long hours, too, so when he gets back to the room he’s made his he can just crash, exhausted – for a while, at least, it helps keep the dreams away.

He still dreams, of course – no matter how tired he makes himself, every few nights he will dream. The worst part of the nightmares is the feeling of joy that permeates some of them; he knows it isn’t his, can’t be his, but one night he dreams of slitting someone’s throat and drinking their blood, and all he can remember is how satisfying it was.

On those nights he wakes and throws up.

Sometimes he dreams of talking to people he’s never met. They wear leather and scuffed boots and dirty jeans, and he thinks they’re dangerous, but still he wants to find them. He catches himself watching for them out of the corner of his eye; when he notices he’s doing it, he shakes his head and tries to forget them. They’re probably dead anyway.

If the people he works with think him strange, because he comes in every day with dark circles under his eyes, has scars on his cheeks and his hands, and looks too old to be working a job usually reserved for teenagers, they say nothing, and for that he is grateful. If they talk, it’s about inconsequential things, like work or school or what beach they like.

Nick can’t talk about school, of course, and he always feels exposed at the beach, like his scars give away too much under the bright, bright sun, but he listens and offers what he can.

This is how he ends up offering to give one of his co-workers a ride home.

Her name is Katie and she’s a student, studying marine biology. Her brother has taken her car and can’t pick her up, and she doesn’t want to walk so late at night. Nick’s apartment is near the coffee shop and they walk there together, staying under the streetlights. Nick’s car looks old and battered sitting by the kerb

“I really appreciate this,” she’s telling him, and he opens his mouth to say it was nothing when she hits him.

He pushes himself up from the concrete, dazed and tasting blood. When he touches a finger to his lip it comes away red.

“What...” he says, and she grins down at him, on his knees, blinking at her in shock.

“You didn’t think you could hide from us forever, did you?” she says. “Poor Nick, always on the run. We can always find you, Nick. Always. We’ve always known where you were. Where you are.” She smiles, a sharp, wicked thing.  As she blinks, her eyes turn black. “Who do you think killed your wife and daughter? Sarah was so pretty when she was bleeding.”

“Oh God,” he says, and, though he knows it isn’t her any more, knows what controls her body now, “Katie?”

She laughs, leaning down to cup his chin with one hand. She’s still wearing the bright pink nail polish Katie likes, and her nails dig cruelly into his skin. He fumbles for the knife he keeps in his boot but she easily knocks it away.

“Katie isn’t here right now,” she says, and that’s when he hits her with a handful of salt.

She reels back, hissing, swiping at her eyes where the salt touched her. Nick scrambles to his feet, racing for the trunk of his car where that first bag of salt still sits. He needs to get to it, needs to-

A hand grabs the back of his collar, yanking him backwards and off his feet. He chokes, gasping as the hand twists and tightens the material around his neck.

“We will use you to bring him back,” the demon who was Katie snarls in his ear. “He will return! Our master will rise again!”

“Yeah?” says a voice. “Well I don’t think so.” A shotgun blast rings out and the demon is thrown away from Nick, who slumps down against the side of his car, coughing and rubbing his neck as he fights for air.

Turning around, Nick tries to breathe as a small dark woman attacks the demon, holding her off with the shotgun as she spits out an exorcism, hard and fast and practiced.

The demon screams. Black smoke streaks through the sky. Katie’s body crumples to the ground.

The woman kneels beside Katie and checks her pulse, quickly. Then she stands in one fluid motion, casting her gaze over their surroundings.

“You should get up,” she says to Nick. She sounds English, and tough, and dangerous. She knows what she’s doing, experience evident in the way she scans the darkness beyond the halo of the streetlight, the way her hands are steady on her gun. “There might be more.”

“Who _are_ you?” Nick asks in return, pulling himself up and to his feet and trying to ignore the part of him that wants nothing more than to curl up with his eyes closed inside the ring of salt on his apartment floor until everyone’s forgotten about him. He feels stupid for ever letting himself think that they had. _You can never escape,_ the voice in his head says. He tries to ignore that, too, though less successfully.

“My name’s Tamara,” she tells him, short and brusque. “I’m a hunter.” And that word he knows, somehow, knows what it means and why he should probably be afraid of her, even though she has just saved his life. He collects his knife from the pavement and slides it back into his shoe, though his eyes don’t leave her for more than a second.

“Nick,” he says slowly, tamping down the urge to just climb in his car and run, again. His legs feel like jelly, like he’s just run a mile; _not built for this_ filters into his mind, the echo of a memory, and he can’t help but think that maybe the devil could be right about something.

She pushes her short hair out of her eyes and says, “I know. And I also know what you did, and why you did it.” She points towards a beat-up old sedan on the other side of the road. It’s probably a dark blue but in the darkness it looks almost black. “Which is why I’m going to ask you to come with me.”

Nick’s brain stumbles over the request, unable to process it. “Why?” he stammers, disbelieving. “If you know – if you know, why the hell would you want to go anywhere with me?”

She looks at him then, mouth set in a grim line. “Because I know what it’s like to lose someone, and what you’ll do to get them back.”

Nick remembers the grim emptiness he felt when Sarah died, and sees the same loss reflected on Tamara’s face. He runs a finger over one of the marks on his neck – there’s nothing keeping him there, really, nothing that ties him to Los Angeles, to the apartment, to anything. He nods, once, and she jerks her head at his apartment building.

“Do you have anything you need up there?” she asks, and he shakes his head. There’s nothing there but salt now and he has no desire to go back. “Then let’s go.” The old car’s doors creak as they settle inside; Nick slouches low in his seat as she starts the engine. Over the dashboard the streetlights are magnified and flare on the glass.

The city is quiet as they pull away from the kerb.

The silence is broken by a shrill ringing that makes Nick jump; Tamara pulls her phone out of her pocket and puts it to her ear.

“What?” she says after a moment, frowning. “It’s not really- Fine then. But you owe me one.” She clicks it shut and sighs.

Nick pushes himself a little higher in his seat. “Did something happen?”

“That was a contact of mine in Lancaster, asking for some help on a job.” Tamara’s eyes flick over to Nick for a moment and he swallows, suddenly nervous. “If it weren’t urgent I wouldn’t even consider asking, but I can either drop you off at a motel nearby, or...” He knows what’s coming. “Or you can come with me. I understand if you want to stay somewhere safe, after what you’ve been through. Anyone would.”

Fear rises in Nick’s throat, but also anger. Her words sound like an accusation. “No,” he says, surprising even himself. “I want to – to _do_ something.” He really does, he realises. The words seem truer as he says them. “I want to help.”

She glances at him again and he tells her, “Maybe this way I can start to make things right.”

The car speeds through the streets of Los Angeles and Tamara nods. Nick sinks back down against the leather seat and hopes that somehow this job will help him atone for his sins.

 _You can never escape_ , says the voice in his head bitterly, but this time he thinks, _maybe I can._


End file.
